There exists a website (wintersoldier.com) whose sole purpose is to bash VVAW. Keith Nolan, author of ten books on the Vietnam War, took offense at the tactics used at wintersoldier.com and attempted to post a message at the website's message board. The administrator refused to post Nolan's message. Nolan's message, and the administrator's response follow.
NOLAN TO WINTERSOLDIER:
Please consider this letter a protest against the one-sided arguments and underhanded tactics deployed at this website in order to bash John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
It is one thing to disagree with the political philosophy of the VVAW, or to argue that the organization drew false conclusions about genocide-as-policy based on the isolated war crimes its members saw in Vietnam.
It is another thing entirely, however, to defame those combat veterans who joined the VVAW as misfits, frauds, liars, traitors, and dupes of the KGB. What rubbish. You would never know from this website that General David Shoup, USMC (Ret), who earned the Medal of Honor in WWII, publicly supported John Kerry and the VVAW in 1971.
Every veterans organization attracts a certain fringe element, and I don't doubt, as is charged here, that a charlatan like Mark Lane included false testimony in his book about Vietnam. It is also charged here, however, that numerous phonies gave false testimony at the VVAW's Winter Soldiers Investigation in Detroit, and that only about thirty-percent of the men who participated in Operation Dewey Canyon III were genuine veterans of the Vietnam War. This I very much doubt, and I have searched this website in vain for even a shred of proof to back up these very serious charges.
All this website really has to offer are the personal opinions of historians Burkett and Lewy, who seem to have had no personal contact with VVAW members and are instead relying on information from the Nixon Whitehouse. For obvious political reasons, the Nixon administration did its best in 1971 to discredit Kerry and the VVAW. They came up with one VVAW leader (Al Hubbard) who had lied about his rank and exaggerated his military service. And that was it. They did not identify any other phony veterans, nor did they identify by name a single fraud who provided testimony in Detroit.
Who were all the liars and frauds in the VVAW? No one seems to know. And what exactly were they lying about in Detroit? One or two possibly exaggerated stories aside, the great majority of those who testified in Detroit described the exact same kind of abuses and atrocities that show up in the court-martial record of the war, in memoirs written by Vietnam veterans, and in histories written by academics. I don't understand how this website can so blithely dismiss the Detroit testimony when the stories told in Detroit mirror the documented war crimes committed at places like My Lai, My Khe, and Son Thang, and the documented illegal behavior of units like Task Force Barker and the Tiger Force of the 1-327th Airborne Infantry.
I've personally heard the same kind of stories about burned villages, mistreated civilians, and summarily executed prisoners dozens of times over from Vietnam veterans who have no political sympathy for the left-wing politics of the VVAW. Wars produce atrocities. Frustrating guerrilla wars produce a particularly horrific number of atrocities. That some individual soldiers and certain units responded with excessive brutality in Vietnam shouldn't really surprise anyone. I know many good men who stayed true to their moral compass in Vietnam and served with distinction and honor. I also know many good men who have spent their lives regretting the things they did under the pressure of combat back when they were nineteen- and twenty-year-old grunts in Vietnam.
And why the desire at this website to whitewash the counterproductive brutality of General Westmoreland's search-and-destroy strategy? As has been noted by many disgusted infantry officers, Westmoreland's search-and-destroy strategy resulted in thousands of destroyed villages, tens of thousands of civilian casualties, hundreds of thousands of refugees, and drove the rural population of Vietnam into the arms of the Viet Cong. Kerry was only speaking the truth when he said that "We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them."
Good men are allowed to disagree on something as tragic as the Vietnam War without one side condemning those on the other side of the political line as being liars and frauds. Too bad that VVAW members like Barry Romo, James Duffy, Mark Lenix, Nathan Hale, Charles Stephens, Gary Keyes, Michael Hunter, Mike McCusker, Scott Moore, Donald Duncan, Steve Pitkin, and Kenneth Ruth aren't here to defend themselves against the charge that they never served in combat and invented their stories about Vietnam.
Keith Nolan
(author of RIPCORD, OPERATION BUFFALO, SAPPERS IN THE WIRE, etc.)
Here's the response I got from the website administrator:
WINTERSOLDIER TO NOLAN:
Sorry, but we feel no obligation to provide space for those who wish to denigrate and marginalize what we're trying to accomplish. Consider writing your own web site. Admin
Keith W. Nolan has been interviewing Vietnam veterans and writing about their experiences since 1978. He is author of ten books on the war, including RIPCORD, OPERATION BUFFALO, SAPPERS IN THE WIRE, and THE MAGNIFICENT BASTARDS. He lives near St. Louis, Missouri. He can be reached at KWNolan@aol.com
Did you know that the VVAW were planning to execute Senators while Kerry was a member? Probably not hey?
Now this is a band of people we need to look up to and support?
It fits you h@ts.
"Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those who say this are witless." ~Ayatollah Khomeini
USA1 said this in post #2 : Did you know that the VVAW were planning to execute Senators while Kerry was a member? Probably not hey?
Now this is a band of people we need to look up to and support?
It fits you h@ts.
Did you read the letter? Keith Nolan says - "It is one thing to disagree with the political philosophy of the VVAW, or to argue that the organization drew false conclusions about genocide-as-policy based on the isolated war crimes its members saw in Vietnam.
It is another thing entirely, however, to defame those combat veterans who joined the VVAW as misfits, frauds, liars, traitors, and dupes of the KGB. What rubbish."
But that's just what you are doing. I'll ask you once again - did Kerry and the VVAW try to bring the Vietnam war to an end? If so why are they the bad guys when Nixon kept it going and allowed the needless deaths of thousands of US troops and Vietnamese?
Why are politicians not to blame for the Vietnam war? You are obviously bitter about the war need someone to blame for it and for some bizarre reason blame fellow soldiers who tried to stop the war continuing.
JFK got us into the Nam War with his lame reason that we needed Laos to be an open route for our country.
Another dem.
LBJ perpetuated the war for his own pol. reasons.
Another dem.
Nixon got us out of Nam.
A rep.
Ergo: Dems get us into a lot of trouble and the reps. have to bail us out.
I could go on with this and include Carter and Clinton..but it is just repetitious.
If Bush is truly a bad President, I would still prefer him over another dem.
However, I find no fault with Bush and his actions. Bush is pro-active, not reactive. The terrorists are pulling out all the stops to make Bush look bad so Kerry will get in the Whitehouse.
becker said this in post #4 : JFK got us into the Nam War with his lame reason that we needed Laos to be an open route for our country.
Another dem.
LBJ perpetuated the war for his own pol. reasons.
Another dem.
Nixon got us out of Nam.
A rep.
Ergo: Dems get us into a lot of trouble and the reps. have to bail us out.
I could go on with this and include Carter and Clinton..but it is just repetitious.
If Bush is truly a bad President, I would still prefer him over another dem.
However, I find no fault with Bush and his actions. Bush is pro-active, not reactive. The terrorists are pulling out all the stops to make Bush look bad so Kerry will get in the Whitehouse.
It's well known that both Democrats and Republicans have virtually the same foreign policy. So whoever's in power it's the same old same old, but with one difference - Bush has taken America's aggresion to new dangerous levels. He now says it's okay to go to war with anyone that might possibly at some time in the future maybe be a threat, and - as shown in Iraq - it can be based on the flimsiest of reaons, and even when those reasons all turn out to be wrong - that's okay too because he can make some new ones up to justify the action.
Other countries can now start using this new approach with their own foreing policy. How about China going to war and occupying Taiwan? Why not if the Chinese government say they might be a threat?
The idea that Al Qaeda would prefer Kerry to Bush is laughable. Presuming they actually care at all, Bush went to war using reasons that ALL turned out to be wrong, giving Al Qaeda the credibility and popularity they needed. Disparate terrrorist organisation from all over the world have come together. Terrorism has risen as Bush was warned would happen if he invaded Iraq. One time allies are now divided. America is utterly divided. Sounds like everything Bin Laden could have hoped for and more really?
Bush went to war for good reason. Like it or not.
Kerry wished we had invaded Iran or N. Korea instead. Kerry wanted a bigger war than Bush. Good idea Kerry.
Taiwan has never invaded and murdered it's neighbors or murdered it's own people. China wants Taiwans success and it's revenue and will wage war to get it.
As far as alliented our Allies. I think you are mistaking this for popular opinions by Euro-liberals.
The US has the same allies today that we had before and after the war and work closly with them every single day. We didn't get the big 3 allies supoort in Iraq because they were going to loose their contracts with Iraq. Those same 3 allies agreed through the UN on all issues including WMD.
They did not want to go to war because of fear for broken contracts.
I hope the Iraqi people look back at this someday and refuse to do further business and contracts with Saddam lovers like France but, that is inevitably their decision.
History will show them who did what to gain them their freedom.
"Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those who say this are witless." ~Ayatollah Khomeini
USA1: Bush went to war for good reason. Like it or not.
Oh, okay then, that's a good argument.
Kerry wished we had invaded Iran or N. Korea instead. Kerry wanted a bigger war than Bush. Good idea Kerry.
Taiwan has never invaded and murdered it's neighbors or murdered it's own people. China wants Taiwans success and it's revenue and will wage war to get it.
Where did you get this idea from? Has Kerry said that he is going to invade N Korea?
As far as alliented our Allies. I think you are mistaking this for popular opinions by Euro-liberals.
The US has the same allies today that we had before and after the war and work closly with them every single day. We didn't get the big 3 allies supoort in Iraq because they were going to loose their contracts with Iraq. Those same 3 allies agreed through the UN on all issues including WMD.
They did not want to go to war because of fear for broken contracts.
Bush needs the Germans and French to help out in Iraq and is trying to undo the diplomatic blunders he and people like Rumsfeld made a year ago. Like it or not.
I hope the Iraqi people look back at this someday and refuse to do further business and contracts with Saddam lovers like France but, that is inevitably their decision.
History will show them who did what to gain them their freedom.
Polls show the Iraqis are far more friendly towards the French. You think bombing a country and killing people and torturing them in prisons is a good way to makes friends?
Kerry said the greater threat was N. Korea and Iran and that's where we should have put our efforts. Great idea Kerry. Who needs the Draft? John Kerry, that's who. The very person who would call you a war criminal after he gets you to sign. He is the only war criminal I know and he admits it with no regrets. What a piece of crap this guy is.
"Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those who say this are witless." ~Ayatollah Khomeini
10-15-2004 07:46 PM
